Are you feeling lucky, punk?

I have often pondered whilst creating music and teaching creativity, have we got it wrong?

Is it possible that from the age of Enlightenment onwards it’s been a race to the bottom, have we inadvertently thrown out important elements of thinking and attempt to be rational?

We are conceited, positioning ourselves above those from the past, and being superior to traditional people, because of our education.

We are born into countries that are modern and then away we are lucky, but have we lost something that people living in simpler times and in societies that we would look at as being rather backward have not?

I am not trying to sugar-coat what life is like in these communities or that we would be better off returning to those times or those ways of thinking but there truly seems to be something missing in our modern Western society. For me the evidence of this is the deep unhappiness that sits within people. There is a definite chasm that has opened up in the people who live in the United Kingdom because of political allegiances and possibly this is true in America with the people pro Trump and anti-Trump. But the evidence is also found in the high levels of depression and suicide amongst the young. Where is the love for life? It seems to have been replaced by a feeling of angst, whether this is due to pressure within the education system to achieve such an early age, our loss of spiritual identity due to modernity which might explain the rise of paganism both here and the US or whether there is a feeling of hopelessness that to get on your gonna be saddled with so much debt that you would never be able to afford your own home, this is a shocking indictment and shows the farce of progress.

So can we bring back some of these elements that we have thrown out with the bathwater? Can we believe again in luck and what’s more can we start to tip probability in our favour by believing in it? Dr Wiseman wrote a book about being lucky, in this book entitled The Luck Factor. Richard Wiseman conducts experiments on people who consider themselves lucky and those who consider themselves unlucky and he finds evidence that the belief enables the lucky people to find things that the unlucky people do not.

The anthropologist Eduardo Kohn who studied magical practices within traditional societies said that there is more than more instances of magical events within traditional societies who believe in magic than in those who do not. To the rational mind that sounds like people deceiving themselves. But are we beginning to see that the rational mind is actually deceiving us?  because what it isn’t allowing us to be aware of is that the unconscious moves in peculiar ways, chance happenings chance meetings that fulfil ideas that are in your head, none of these are logical and many of these statistically improbable but they happen.

Now I spent many years writing and teaching people to become successful musicians and if you look at the statistical probability of these people succeeding it is virtually zero the numbers of bands that exist chasing after success, and these people need an irrational belief that they will succeed in order to survive and gain any form of success.

So let’s put luck back on the agenda and let’s start viewing things optimistically in order to at least have a chance to succeed. Maybe that belief in luck might increase your chances of things that are probabilistic I like somebody’s definition of probability and possibility, ‘there is a rich man in a car, it is possible for him to get out of the car and dodge traffic and come over to you and give you £1000 but he probably will not’, unless you increase the probability that he might, maybe this is where luck comes in.

So the question is, ‘Are you feeling lucky, punk?’

Vic

Come to blues camp running this year in July in the lovely Tonbridge School in Kent visit www.bluescampUK.co.uk for full details

See you there

What would you do if you knew couldn’t fail, would you write about; if you knew that a song could create a reality?

The first part of this question is a premise from NLP, designed to focus the mind about change.

For change to happen we have to either believe that it can, or better still suspend our disbelief , because it is our belief systems that tend to hold back this is often enough. Taking this idea further if you are a musician what would you write about if your song could create a reality? Just for a moment allow the possibility of this being plausible, so that we can create!

My guess would be that the writing about lost love or  how difficult life is would not only create a cliché, but it also might set the mind on the course to look for that situation to fulfil.  For a change to happen we must write something far more positive, for example about having money,  or having happiness.

Interestingly successful artists do tend to write positive songs! The most obvious who spring to mind are The Beatles, who wrote about love and quoted the word more times than any other band in existence, and they seemed to do quite well in reflection! But along with those, are artists like Robbie Williams, Bob Marley, Abba, Queen, Neil Young and Michael Jackson.

Whether or not the Beatles were in the sub zeitgeist of the time, or whether they actually helped to make that ‘Love Movement’ happen in the 60’s is obviously debatable, and obviously they were not the only ones! But, there is an interesting interaction between art and reality; as in the quote’ life mimicking art’. So it must happen enough times to be obvious to the general population, that there is a certain amount of conjuring the future through art.

I think the unexpected outcome of this is the fact that we end up with interesting pieces of music. I have been experimenting with this concept with people at Bluescampuk,  and private pupils for couple of years. There is something in that creative process that is worth pursuing , and in some cases produces some weird results. It doesn’t have to be a song, it could be a poem; just  create something that focuses the mind in a different direction than just rambling through some crude clichés!

I would be interested to see some of your results; which you can send either at my website www.vichyland.com blues camp website which is www.bluescampUK.co.uk

Let the process begin!

Vic

Is it the beginning of the end for the fee paying schools in the UK, or just being able to teach musical instruments in them?

This is a question which I have pondered quite a lot in the last year or so, from the perspective of the visiting music teachers because they are an important part of their income.

Let’s face it the public schools in the UK have survived two world wars and although many went bust there are a number that have survived since the time of Henry VIII, but maybe the Internet is a bigger threat than Nazi Germany! Technology has already managed to dismantle the music industry, and also the world of the newspapers; it is also doing a good job taking on the world of publishing!

I read a little while ago an article by Lorena McKennitt, about the effect that technology had on the music industry with open full-scale piracy being the norm now for public schools. It’s not so much piracy, but the fact that education can be undertaken on the Internet for very little money. Schools have become part of the childminding industry as an unintended consequence for some, they have developed this as a side-line business with breakfast clubs and after school activities.  What would you do with your children when you go to work everyday? If you can have a school activity to put them in that solves the problem.

So what I’ve seen recently is a squeeze on lessons from the point of view of cost, and of time; these are some of the games that are played on the peripatetic music staff.

 The cost of lessons is increased to the parents, but remains fairly consistent to the music teacher. Now I experienced this first hand with one of the fee paying schools that I worked where the rate was only going up (if it did go up) by a percentage point per year , but the parents were paying significantly more each year. The cost reached £50 an hour  of which the music staff were only getting  (with everything included such as pension payments and petrol and supposed holiday pay) £30 an hour maximum. Now the reason behind this I fully understand from a business perspective, because the school suddenly had an unexpected increase in costs from the Church of England. They owned the land that the buildings sat on, took the pepper corn rent thousands of pounds in a year, adding this to costs of government guidelines on child protection and the increase in the employers contribution to the teacher pension fund they were looking for as many soft targets as possible.

Time that staff contribute for free

The other game that is played is when the pupils cannot have lessons, so that could be the whole of the lunchtime, church services and if the school is attached to a cathedral et cetera that becomes even more pronounced. Lessons where the pupil is taken to play sport or there’s a school trip, and often in these cases the teachers are never advised in advance. So like a zero hours contract if you are not teaching, you often are not being paid.

Streamlining timetables 

The so-called streamlining of the school timetable where the lessons have to coordinate to the timetable which will mean there could be up to 10 minutes lost time per lesson; the academic lesson is 40 mins the music lesson is 30minutes which means there is 5 minutes for a pupil to arrive at the beginning and 5 to leave. This results in a significant drop in the income of the peripatetic teacher.

Now I’m not sure whether the streamlining effect is something to do with inspection bodies suggesting better use of time et cetera, and then the school tick boxing by doing this sort of thing. But I feel this all comes from a perspective of desperation on the part of the school administration, because even a successful school with plenty of staff still has to take these jobs to already stretched employees in order to cut costs. 

Often these schools are in old buildings 

Most of these independent schools are in old buildings which brings with them a significant problem of upkeep. This is part of a problem that in some cases they may also be in listed building, which increases the costs considerably.

Who is paying the fess?

So now factor in who are the people paying the fees at these schools, and if these people are also under pressure financially because of problems in the workplace 

You only need to have one highly successful state school in the catchment area of a public school and they are in real trouble because if that school are getting results that exceed the public schools, which they often do, and they are not a grammar school (although the effect of the grammar schools in the Kent is significant) and there is no bullying, and there are no fees it’s a bit of a no-brainer. 

Back in the day being educated in a public school had real kudos the ‘Old School Tie’ effect, and it was an important way of getting into seriously good employment because of the connections that your school offered, but unfortunately that does not exist anymore. For those people reading this in the US that is similar to being able to state that you came from an Ivy League College

So, we will wait to see what will happen! I no longer work within this sector, however many of my friends do and they are already saying that the numbers are dropping off for lessons. We have already  got quite a heady cocktail, so for those of you who are involved in education and teaching in schools it might be advisable to find a few more baskets put your eggs in, just to be safe!

Vic 

Www.bluescampuk.co.uk

Three days of rocking and rolling playing the blues and reggae and jazz and funk, what more could you ask for!?

Heart attack and stroke, music to the rescue

It is close to a year since I had a heart attack and stroke, and what has music done for my recovery? 

At the end of January last year I had a heart attack, two days later a stroke.  Fortunately the heart attack was at home, my wife was there to call an ambulance; the stroke happened while I was still in hospital. This will explain to those of you who follow the blog why there has been a considerable break!

I obviously recovered well from the stroke, and although the lasting effects are quite subtle these are significant because they affect certain elements of my musical memory, and performance capability.

Most of this is to do with multitasking and learning new songs. It definitely takes me longer to process, particularly if I am playing and singing. However, what I want to focus on today is how I have found that learning and playing a musical instrument helped, and ultimately sped up my recovery.

First of all I was able to play, but the way it affected me was I felt very rusty and when it came to reading music it was like reading through a fog! However, by focusing on the small aspects of the task in front of me for example, reading a couple of bars of music very slowly,  I found after a short period of time that facility improved enormously. Likewise with playing, I found that regular short periods of practice enabled me to improve rapidly.

Another area that I found interesting was my cognitive ability particularly when it came to using a computer keyboard; I was affected in such a way that I couldn’t recognise certain letters on the keys. I had to relearn how to spell a number of words, it seemed as if I was reapplying my memory in another place and once this developed, that memory stuck.

So then I started doing some of my private lessons online using FaceTime or Skype I found that multitasking, such as listening to somebody play and watching them whilst typing  on another keyboard and remembering what it was I wanted to say when the person finished playing, speeded up my recovery  and cognitive repair.

I still get very tired when doing mental work, and I have to break my work down into small sections of time. I’ve also reduced the amount of work to only two days of actual physical face-to-face teaching which could last anything up to five or six hours. After that I definitely need to shut down, and I do this by meditating or power napping.

The experience of this has not been all bad, infact I have learnt a lot about certain states such as dyslexia from this experience. It has also given me chance to step back from what I was doing , and evaluate my work. This has led to me starting a  music charity, and focusing on podcasting.

As usual Blues Camp will be running next year,  but we did have to cancel this year. Part of the franchise moved to France, this will be running as part if it next year which is incredibly exciting!

So to sum up I have recovered well and my experience wouldn’t be the same as somebody else who had the same medical condition. However, I truly believe that playing a musical instrument, particularly when it is something you already do, can greatly benefit your recovery. This is because it is using existing memory and learning something new within that framework, which helps the brain’s elasticity. I’m not sure how easy it would have been to have learned an instrument from scratch after having stroke, but I tend to think that reassessing something that is already in the mind even if it is something that you did as a child has real potential, and this is often shown in studies of elderly people with dementia.

So, I will be back next week with another perspective about music! Please check out the podcast either on YouTube or iTunes podcast this is called ‘Creative’, There are a number of interesting interviews including Adele’s guitarist Ben Thomas, and a storyteller called Andreas Kornevall. All of these people have great ideas explaining how they became successful in their fields, and how they use creative thinking.

Remember Blues Camp for next year!  Please visit www.bluescampUK.co.uk for details

Vic

The Hidden Curriculum

"I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers to care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic -- it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor."

John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

It is a fascinating phenomenon within school education although on the surface it appears to be about teaching skills to people but it is more about the undercurrent of making people conform to a way of thinking. I have always been fascinated about the history of teaching and education and historically the state did not want people to know what was going on, that is why education was restricted first of all to the rich and ruling classes and only to the males. The timing of when education expanded to include the less noble classes firstly the middle classes and then the lower classes and then also to include women is a thing that fascinates me the most.

This tells us a lot about what education does because the drive to get the poor into schools was partly driven by the industrial revolution but mostly driven by what the Germans  and the French were doing. As the Germans got all of their working classes into schools we started to follow suit. This goes to show a cynical aspect that it is not really about educating people but about training and keeping up with the competition.

Today what passes as education is box ticking of things set by government and looks less and less about the old idea of opening the mind but more like binding it to the doctrine of the government think tanks. I liken it  to considering the education system as some form of thinking entity that overpowers the good intentions of teachers and even  pupils. The biggest damage that is caused by the education system is exactly what is implied in the above quotation, this idea of limitation, conformity and restriction. It is like the whole system has cast a spell over people making them feel that they cannot go against what they are being told as if it is some sort of rulebook on how to live your life and how to think. I am not sure whether we are going to get to the point like the emperor’s new clothes where we see things as they are and are able to change. It is quite likely that the system will change because it will fall apart at some point.

That falling apart may happen sooner than we imagine and it might hit independent schools first because of the rising costs incurred and charged by them. I have written about this before but there is an interesting similarity historically to the rise of the internal combustion engine, that when cars were being produced in great numbers the skills of the leather maker, the production of saddles the breeding of working horses many other skills related to the old transport system became obsolete. In reflection we can look at that and say why didn’t they see it coming. This could well be the situation in the education system at the moment. in the near future people will be taught at home or in some sort of electronic cottage which does not require teachers or staff just somebody to mind the kids and to some extent. in the US that’s already happening and in the UK if you speak to teachers much of their time is taken up in social administration and not education.

We should be able to see this coming, a change that will seem so obvious in the future but not clear to us at the moment, everything is there in place, everybody can be taught online now I do not necessary think this is a good idea because this is more of the same, the only to get out would be home educate your children.

So let’s take this back to the creative musician and teacher, what does that means for us?  The psychological benefits of learning a musical instrument may attract the type of people and parents who see that this is a way of developing thinking in their children and themselves and maybe that is our salvation, maybe the above quotation is an expression of the problems with the system generally and that we are beginning to see how much of a house of cards modernity appears to be.

Vic

www.bluescamp.uk.co.uk

come and play in a band see what you really can do, three days of fun and mischief.